On Thursday, a federal court judge in New York made what Eriq Gardner at the Hollywood Reporter called an "unusual move" in Sarah Palin's libel lawsuit against the New York Times. It is indeed extraordinarily unusual, and would appear not to bode well for the Times — which likely explains why the paper's colleagues in the establishment press are, for the most part, either not reporting it at all or inadequately reporting it.

The first news reports of House IT staffer Imran Awan's Monday arrest "for attempting to flee the country and (being) charged with bank fraud" came out on Tuesday night. The New York Times did not file a related story until Friday afternoon, roughly 72 hours later, for Saturday's print edition. Reporter Nicholas Fandos's Page A18 item is one of the most obvious and disgraceful attempts at misdirection and reality avoidance one will ever see, starting with its headline, which, incredibly, makes it appear as if this scandal, which the Democratic Party entirely owns, involves President Donald Trump.

On Tuesday on MSNBC, as he was being interviewed by members of the press, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham's audio suddenly and completely went away. After discussing a reported meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian "lawyer" named Natalia Veselnitskaya, Graham said: "I’m sure they (Trump officials) met with a lot of people during the campaign. I’m sure the Clinton campaign met with —" ... well, we don't know what he said after that. That's because the network's Kasie Hunt, clearly without warning the cameraperson involved, decided that she didn't want to hear about Mrs. Clinton, and that she instead needed to run over and speak with Kentucky Senator Rand Paul.

Now we know that advertisers and the public are being supplied fake ratings by the same broadcasters who so often deliver fake news. A Thursday morning Wall Street Journal dispatch by Joe Flint reports that the broadcast networks routinely inflate their reported evening news audiences. They hide low-performing evening audiences by — get this — "forgetting how to spell."

On Thursday evening, CNN.com ran a story by reporter Thomas Frank which, according to a now-posted Editor's Note, connected "Anthony Scaramucci with (congressional) investigations into the Russian Direct Investment Fund." The Editor's Note tells the network's readers: "That story did not meet CNN's editorial standards and has been retracted." Further, "Links to the story have been disabled. CNN apologizes to Mr. Scaramucci." Then, in a Monday evening bombshell, Fox News's Howard Kurtz reported that "Three journalists (have) quit CNN in fallout from (the) retracted Russia story" — although it's possible they may have resigned instead of getting fired. What in the world happened?

There are people who appear to live in hermetically sealed bubbles, and then there's Chris Cillizza, formerly of the Washington Post but now at CNN. On the apparently safe assumption that he really thought President Donald Trump and the public would have a hard time coming up with answers, Cillizza challenged the Commander in Chief and, and in effect the Twitterverse, to "name a (news) story that is 'fake' or 'incorrect.'" A tidal wave of specific responses arrived in short order.

Time Magazine's May 29 cover features a purported parody of the U.S. White House turning red and well towards being transformed into what the illustrator believes is "the Kremlin." This is supposed to show just how creative and conscientious these folks are. What it really shows is the opposite.

Calling in to Thursday’s NBC Today during a special report on the death of former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, New York magazine’s Gabe Sherman bid the media executive good riddance as he launched into an incendiary rant calling Ailes a “terrorizing figure” whose “quest for power consumed him.”

The Associated Press and reporter Julie Pace are among the last institutions and people on earth, respectively, with any credibility to harangue the public about the dangers of "a man willing to challenge - in dramatic fashion - the institutions created to hold the president accountable." But there they were on Wednesday morning, in the wake of President Donald Trump's decision to fire FBI Director James Comey, doing just that.

Democratic Party strategist Peter Daou is among the sorest of all the sore losers having a hard time handling Hillary Clinton's November electoral loss to Donald Trump. He has been ranting for weeks on Twitter about how sexism hurt Mrs. Clinton, how "THE PLAYING FIELD ... (was) TILTED AGAINST HER" (yes, the original was in all caps), and even that the media "helped Trump win." Friday, Daou took his act to Tucker Carlson's Fox News show, where, as would be expected, Carlson made valid points, while Daou had nothing but tired excuses and spin.

In a segment on media bias on his Wednesday evening Fox News show, there was an interesting juxtaposition between host Tucker Carlson's short opening flashback to a conversation with Reuters reporter and White House Correspondents Association President Jeff Mason at Reuters and the live conversation he had with Buzzfeed Editor Ben Smith. Smith incredibly insisted that "people don't get into the business of reporting ... because we are political activists."

The opening of the May 3 episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit was eerily reminiscent of the actual scandal from which the episode was cribbed. Comet Ping Pong pizza parlor was exchanged for the “Coral Dragon” Chinese restaurant, but the basic story was identical. Intrepid conspiracy theorists uncovered a secret code in hacked emails that detailed a Congressional child sex ring. Countless victims were being held in the restaurant’s non-existent basement, just waiting for a brave “self-investigator” to rescue them.

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